the charities of life, does the female appear over the male portion of mankind.

The small, dirty room we had been forced into, with their own filthy prisoners, was barely large enough for our own party to lay down, and it opened into an inner court of the building, which was occupied by the regiment, into which we could not pass for the sentinel at our door. Here we were kept three hours without water, when it was but a short distance from us. The heat and dust almost suffocating us, added to our fatigue in being forced over the mountains at a rapid gait, made our thirst intolerable. The soldiers of the regiment had plenty of water near us, while we had to suffer all the tortures of the extremest want of it, until the Mexican officers had luxuriated in their national effeminacy, the siesta.

At length the lieutenant-colonel, whose name I [196] did not learn, but an officer vastly more humane than the colonel, made his appearance, and, upon our remonstrance, had the Mexican prisoners taken out of our room and a barrel of water brought us. In the mean time I purchased a tin cup of water, which had greatly relieved me; and while our men were drinking at the barrel, a dirty soldier of the regiment came in, thrust his gourd and hand into the water up to his wrist, and, when ordered out, replied in the most contemptuous manner that "we were nothing but robber prisoners." This was too much for my Southern temper under the chafings of that day. I smashed his gourd against the floor, seized the fellow by the throat, and kicked him out of the door into the midst of his regiment. As might be supposed, it was an insult to the whole regiment for a "heretic robber-prisoner" thus to treat one of the "magnanimous nation," and they showed strong indications of punishing it in a sanguinary manner, when the lieutenant-colonel came forward to quell the excitement. He inquired the cause of it, and was informed that I had kicked one of the soldiers out of the room, and would do so again when occasion required it, when he ordered that no soldier in future should be permitted to come into our apartment. My treatment of this fellow had this good effect: if it did not give us more bread, it gained us more respect.

March 4th. To-day, our feet being exceedingly sore from our yesterday's march over the mountain, [197] we were permitted to hire a few mules, and eight leagues brought us to Dolores, a handsome town of several thousand inhabitants. We remained at this place all the 5th; it being Sabbath, the regiment had to undergo review, &c. This town is celebrated as the place where, in 1809, the priest Hidalgo first assembled his desultory forces and commenced the Revolution.4 We have already passed over the ground of his final defeat, where the king's troops, under Calleja, beat with great slaughter his mob-army, took him prisoner, and recaptured his immense spoil of many millions which he had taken from Guanaxuato and other cities. To this remarkable man is due the credit for the good or evil which has resulted to Mexico by a severance from